


love at first flight

by foolish_mortal



Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Mile High Club
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-24
Updated: 2015-09-24
Packaged: 2018-04-23 04:09:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4862570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foolish_mortal/pseuds/foolish_mortal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry Hart is the chief business officer and founding member of V-Corp, alongside Richmond Valentine and Gazelle. Gary is the new handsome flight attendant assigned to all of Harry's itineraries. lonely businessman!Harry AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	love at first flight

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ladyjdee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyjdee/gifts).



> Thank you as always to [ladyjdee](ladyjdee.tumblr.com) for the diligent and supportive beta work. You're seriously the best. Pretty much I started writing this to pass the time while delayed at the airport in July, promised her it would be posted by the end of the week, and then suddenly the story grew a plot, and here we are again, why did we ever think this time it would turn out different and I would actually complete a story on time.
> 
> Rating will go up for later chapters.

Harry has a keen memory for faces, and he's quite sure that he has never seen the handsome young man currently mixing up the best martini he's ever tasted.

It's the first time Harry's broken his one-drink rule in transit, but what's the point of flying private if he can't indulge from time to time? He has an inveterate weakness for a well-constructed martini and a certain…visual aesthetic, which his new flight attendant – Gary, it says on the gold plated name tag on his lapel – has been kind enough to provide in spades.

"Has Mr. Valentine employed you long?" Harry purrs, his tone too low to be mistaken for general friendliness, and he stares with unabashed appreciation at Gary's square rosy knuckles as he counts out a stack of glossy ice cubes into a Boston glass and pours a careful measure of gin from a silver jigger.

"Not long," Gary replies cheerfully and plucks a bottle of Vermouth from the trolley. "Hold that for me, won't you, sir?"

Harry is perplexed but obliges, making sure their fingers brush. "Shall I open it?"

"Nah, it's my secret ingredient: stir while glancing at a bottle of Vermouth." Gary winks at him, and Harry's breath catches in his throat. Good lord, but only someone so utterly stunning could get away with an overture as gauche as a wink.

Gary stirs and most certainly does _not_ look at the Vermouth. His eyelashes are bright, his gaze direct and daring. Harry raises his chin, daring him back. He's never been this immediately attracted to a person in his life, and he has to remind himself that he holds a position of power over this young man, that he's too old, too busy, too jaded to have a trite midlife affair with a boy half his age.

Gary's thumb taps against the glass, absently counting out the seconds in the frosty condensation, and in his reverie, Harry doesn't remember when he stops stirring, not till Gary pours the martini with a curl of hand-cut garnish and presents it to him with a flourish.

The prickle of gin against Harry's lips is sparklingly crisp and complex, a revelation.

"Perfect," Harry pronounces and toasts him. Gary smirks with charming youthful arrogance, and the next sip glides silky smooth over Harry's tongue.

 -

Harry lands in Tokyo at 4AM, changes into his best suit, and spends the day closing a purportedly unwinnable deal with Japan's most prolific mobile phone distributor. Richmond phones as soon as the news breaks, and Harry spares a few precious minutes to personally accept his congratulations.

It's close to midnight when Harry slinks back into his empty five star hotel room, his plastic key blurring in and out of focus as he fumbles it into the slot. He briefly entertains the idea of sleeping.

Instead, he gets piss drunk off the ensuite full-service bar, over a series of increasingly appalling failed martinis that deplete most of the gin, a jar of olives, and a profusion of lemon peel twists. It must be the brand of Vermouth, he concludes as his elbow bulldozes over a metal shaker of ice with a raucous clang. Or perhaps, someone ought to be holding the bottle for him.

Harry ends up muzzily falling asleep on top of the covers, too far gone to even have a proper wank, with one hand down his unbuckled trousers and the memory of Gary's brilliant dimpled smile melting against his eyelids.

 -

Richmond Valentine is an innovator, a philanthropist, and a visionary. Harry has had the honour of working for him since Richmond built his first personal computer inside a cluttered suburban garage in Massachusetts.

Harry was barely out of university when he inherited the reins of his late father's tailoring empire, and it was pure coincidence that he flew into Louisville to settle his father's horse racing debt on the very occasion Valentine was collecting his winnings in the same queue at Churchill Downs.

They spoke to pass the time – well, Richmond spoke, and Harry listened, and then he _listened_. Throughout his life, Harry had sensed that his father was nursing with slavish devotion a dying relic of the past, one that threatened to rise from its grave and consume Harry whole, and in Richmond Valentine’s unapologetic vision for the world, Harry saw a new pulse beating towards a nascent future. He liquidated Hart Tailoring's assets that afternoon and threw in his lot with what would be later known as the Valentine Corporation.

And here they are now nearly thirty years later, Harry reflects with a wellspring of pride as his laptop camera winks on, and Richmond and Gazelle's beaming faces fill his laptop screen. He’s proud fit to bursting of all three of them, of everything they’ve achieved and are about to achieve.

Harry hopes that somewhere out in London, his father's old smoking club is choking on their imported cigars as the news circuits invade their enclaves with images of the very undesirables they sought to exclude, who are about to change the whole world together.

 -

James Arnold is dead. Some kind of explosion, ideological assassination likely, considering Arnold's precarious position in climate change and his radical scholarly publications. Pity, Harry thinks dispassionately and arranges Valentine Corp to send flowers to his widow, as well as a substantial donation to Arnold's favourite environmental activism charity.

Harry was never close to Arnold – quite frankly, he often struggled with reconciling Arnold's Malthusian global warming theories with the cheerful man who enjoyed good whiskey and Big Macs – but something about his death appears to have deeply unsettled Richmond.

The SIM card product release is being expedited months earlier than expected, which will cost a veritable fortune, but Richmond remains unconcerned with the steep dip in their profit margins. Harry, whose job it is to worry about money, tries to persuade him otherwise, till Gazelle intervenes in a surprising betrayal to inform him, gently but in no uncertain terms, that production will continue with or without him. It's the first time Harry's been left out of the loop in any joint company decision, and it speaks to their decades-long bond that Richmond and Gazelle's sudden reticence recalls Harry to his boyhood, the way his father could always make him feel strangely small, lonely, and resentful.

Like father, like son, Harry laments with weary aplomb and decides against initiating an ugly confrontation when the company least needs it. No matter what Richmond thinks, they _do_ need money, and it's when he's reviewing the financials again that he notices a minor but steady cash flow the company's been feeding to an unnamed non-profit. Surely some civic-minded project, knowing Richmond's generosity, but Harry can't locate a corresponding invoice.

He should ask Richmond himself, but the release deadline is working Harry around the clock and condensing a year's worth of meetings with their international distributors into a few scant months. Today marks the fourth country in as many weeks, and Harry finally peels himself away from his laptop when the pilot announces they're ready to board. When he reaches his usual seat, he's pleasantly surprised to find a hot cup of tea and a row of major newspapers waiting for him on the fold-down tray table, broadsheets in Spanish, German, Arabic, and, of course, English – all languages Harry reads fluently. At the bottom of the stack, he unearths a copy of The Sun, urgent serifed headlines screaming THEY'RE BEHIND YOU! Clearly, someone's idea of a joke.

"Everything satisfactory, Mr. Hart?"

Harry turns around and drops the newspaper. Gary's taken advantage of his inattention to commandeer the carry-on luggage, and his waistcoat stretches taut over his abdomen as he loads each bag into the overhead bin, his tailored jacket rising just above the swell of his arse. V-Corp's official livery suits Gary, its regal tones of deep plum and gold piping accentuating his trim waist and broad shoulders, his fair colouring. Harry wants to squeeze him until he squeaks.

"More than satisfactory, thank you," he manages, and realises belatedly that he must look like shit, glassy eyed from staring at spreadsheets and his tie askew. Harry skims his hair into place on the pretext of adjusting his glasses and conjures up his most charming smile. "Although, I do confess, I was looking forward to one of your wonderful martinis."

Gary's back snaps straight at _wonderful_ , his beautiful mouth puckering in pleasure, but he replies, "Might be best for you to take a night off, sir."

Good lord, he's being _managed_. Harry humours him. "And why is that, pray?"

"Well...if you'll pardon me saying, sir," Gary continues, emboldened. "You could use the rest – Not that you don't always look so…"

"So?" Harry prompts with a slow indulgent smile, one that only broadens as he observes the faint strains of blush rising from the tips of Gary's ears and up his neck, as if they might converge, blooming, on his cheek. How lovely.

Harry's phone decides right then to chime loudly with Richmond's personal ringtone, rudely interrupting the stirrings of a very fine flirtation, and Harry turns back to matters of business with a mental sigh. The Swedish Prime Minster has opted his country into priority SIM card distribution, which means more work, more meetings, and more nights in-flight with one hand glued to his keyboard as he picks through a dinner he barely tastes.

Gary comes round later with a fresh pot of coffee, cup already filled with milk and sugar just the way Harry likes it. No sign yet of the martini, despite all the hints Harry's been dropping. "Something to keep you awake, sir?" Gary offers with exaggerated deference, and Harry can't decide whether to strangle him or snog him senseless.

The coffee is strong enough to stand up a spoon and brewed with a clean nutty finish that scalds the stale fuzz of sleep from Harry's mouth. The aftertaste is bitter and bracing, flooding his body with bright chemical _zip-_ zip – unusually bitter, actually.

Harry is asleep before the second sip and doesn't even stir when the plane lands in Moscow.

 -

"The new flight attendant is very good-looking," Gazelle observes with cool disinterest. She's polishing one sleek, shining prosthetic with attentive diligence while the other waits in her lap. Across from her, Harry accidentally closes a half-composed email to Elon Musk and has to reclaim it from drafts.

The three of them have decided to take advantage of Harry's brief layover in Silicon Valley to go out for dinner – mend some bridges, Harry supplies unkindly – but Richmond is predictably absent from his own office, a glass tube with panoramic V-Screens and an inordinate number of candy-coloured beanbag chairs.

"I don't know who you mean," Harry replies and resumes typing on his Blackberry, hoping the _tap-tap-_ tap of keys recalls Gazelle's mind to brisk corporate efficiency.

"Don't you? He's assigned to all your itineraries- Greg, isn't it? Or Grant?" Harry refuses to rise to the bait, and she flicks away his reticence with a one-shouldered shrug. "Valentine's Day is coming up, Harry. You might convince him to fly you out on a nice holiday somewhere."

The prospect of having Gary all to himself on a quaint emerald beach somewhere is appealing; Capri, perhaps, or somewhere more remote with no one about to object if they're terribly underdressed for the ocean, Gary in particular, though a slim little pair of spandex briefs would suit him quite nicely -

Harry clears his throat, appalled and aroused. "Are you suggesting I abuse my professional influence to invite one of our employees out on a… a dirty weekend?" Elon pings back a response, and Harry scours the words to within an inch of their lives. "Gazelle, I'm shocked you think I would entertain such an idea. And Richmond certainly wouldn't condone my gallivanting off to god knows where, so close to the release."

"Richmond thinks you've been working too hard. You've been acting paranoid, high strung. We're worried about you. Harry..." Gazelle gently covers his phone, her long, calloused fingers falling surprisingly soft over his hands. Harry uncrosses his eyes from the tiny electronic print and looks Gazelle full in the face: her lips are pale, her cheeks drawn, her bangs falling limp over her forehead. In his self-absorbed arrogance, he hasn't noticed how spare she's grown, how brittle. "Promise me you'll consider it? No V-tech, no phones, no email – just you on a tiny distant island with your Gerard."

"Gary," Harry corrects involuntarily and could bite off his tongue as Gazelle smirks, triumphant.

 -

Their outing is front page news the next morning, Twitter feeds swollen with tag trends and dim unfocused camera phone images of Harry, Gazelle, and Richmond hunched over plates of appetizers. _Tech Trio Take Five_ , NPR proclaims, much preferable to Entertainment Weekly's quite unsavoury _Ménage a Tech._

In the new era of portable tech and universal connectivity, technology's messiahs have become rock stars. Richmond can sell out a stadium faster than God with a Stratocaster, and his face is regularly splashed across magazines ranging from Forbes and WIRED to The Daily Mail. Harry and Gazelle have managed to keep themselves out of the spotlight, Harry with his career as an unglamorous and elusive jetsetter and Gazelle by exuding her signature brand of casual menace. In Harry's opinion, a gentleman's name should only appear in the paper three times: when he's born, when he marries, and when he dies. Unfortunately, the world seems inordinately obsessed with the second headline.

"Be My Valentine" last February's copy of GQ had declared, a dashing photograph of Richmond beaming from underneath a jaunty neon snapback, while Out's infamous "Tech's Hottest Hartthrob is All Business" article featured Harry in a three-piece suit like a well-appointed martinet, the sort of man who would bend you over his desk and make you say your Hail Harrys with a firm hand. Corporate drudges everywhere must have tossed off into the centrefold for weeks imagining themselves working under him in every sense of the word.

Harry isn't interested in being a sex symbol, even less so in carrying the torch as a gay icon – coming out is rather pointless when he doesn't have the time for a personal life, and Tim over at Apple already jumped on that grenade for the rest of them in Bloomberg BusinessWeek, bless him.

The only thing that concerns Harry is the work, and he's bloody good at it. V-Corp's SIM card outreach has already covered most of North America and Africa, with rapidly industrialising Asian giants outracing their Tiger neighbours to bring themselves into the fold. It only takes Harry a week to put their Southeast Asia market on track for V-Corp's SIM card distribution, and most of that is logistical work that should have been delegated to one of Harry's response teams. He's only here as a special favour to the Taiwanese prime minister, who happens to be a close personal friend of Richmond's. (Richmond has a longer list of contacts than most intelligence agencies, and fewer enemies to placate besides; even Richmond's competitors like him.)

The quick turnover leaves Harry with a handful of hours to work on his pet project before his flight, so he spends the morning sitting on his hotel bed in Taipei with his laptop perched on his bare knees, his notes scattered around him like a bizarre summoning ring. He's managed to suss out that the money trail on his mystery charity is funding a project in Siberia, in a remote area where they have no corporate or commercial presence whatsoever.

He's been idly scanning through V-Corp's private server for any relevant files, but it's a rat's nest of a file system, so Harry's been tracking his progress in a notebook, marking dead ends and duplicate folders. Most of the files are works in progress for their R&D division, so it's a good bet Harry will find what he's looking for here.

Today he's browsing through their chemical engineering sector – he didn't even know they had a chemical engineering sector—and the initiatives so far have been meritorious but bland:  airborne quinine dispensaries, degradable dispersant phages for oil spills. Harry saves a few encrypted projects involving antidepressants, innocuous but interesting reading nonetheless, before ringing down for black coffee and a late breakfast.

The room service trolley arrives laden with enough food for two, a tall carafe with two mugs, a small mountain of mantou and delicate wobbly omelettes dotted with scallions, and a plate of complimentary leek pies, crispy and sliced into half-moons.

"I hope you and your guest had a pleasant stay, sir," the concierge says, smiling with fixed friendliness.

"Guest?" Harry frowns. "You must be mistaken, madam."

"A young British man," she prompts. "He gave us your name, told us he was a part of your flight staff and had to see you immediately."

"Gary, you must mean Gary." Harry can't imagine why Gary would need to see him, though he can't deny the low thrill that courses through him at the insinuation of an affair, the rumpled bedsheets and lazy lush mornings of Harry’s idle contemplations briefly made flesh. So instead of correcting the vague sense of impropriety that's hanging in the air, he only thanks her for the breakfast and wheels the trolley into his suite with an uncharacteristic spring in his step.

**Author's Note:**

> This chapter is also remarkable for initially being sent over to ladyjdee via text in actual phone camera pictures of my laptop screen, because the internet was out at my house. The things she has to put up with...
> 
> You can also find me at my tumblr, as [deftmegalodon](deftmegalodon.tumblr.com)


End file.
